James Piereson discussed his book Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism at our Colloquium Friday. His point is that the surprising reaction to JFK’s death stalled the progress of liberalism and led to a change in its meaning. Although his book makes this more clear than his talk--he spends more time than he should on the assassination history itself--it is still very good and his point is unmistakable.
Two things it stalled: the end of the Fed (Executive order 1001) and the end of Vietnam (Kennedy's last national security memo). By spending too much time of the history of the assassination does he reject or accept the Warren Commission and Arlen Spector's single bullet?
Piereson: "In 1963, you have a fairly conservative country, culturally. You have a communist assassinate the president, a popular president. In 1968, the country has kind of gone off the rails, especially liberal-left culture as you find in the universities, and places like that. The students are taking drugs, and they're demonstrating, and they're rioting against the war in Vietnam. Their hero is Castro, and people like Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung. So how do you get, really, from this place in 1963, where Kennedy is shot by a communist, to '68 where communists like Castro are heroes to the left?"
And further to that place in 1975 when Democrats totally sold out JFK's legacy by surrendering to the Communists? You get there because the Liberal Establishment including Teddy could not process JFK's murder as a Communist act, so they chose--and choose--to Blame America instead.
And nothing has been right with them since.
ps; They also caved to Arafat when an Arafatist killed RFK.
Let me guess Brutus: you do not believe the single bullet "theory". That's awesome.
Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left . . .
I guess i put more stock in the people who were there that day, than the strange explanation that followed. It's not back and to the left, it is the sum of strange things going on that day. If Oswald was a communist, why was he let back into the country? If he was a communist, what was Jack Ruby and if he was a low level gangster/patriot why was he in that garage. It goes on and on but I guess you should not let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Camelot, eh? Watch this.
Camelot.